Bridget Jones, funny as ever

Bridget Jones aficionados will be thrilled that, after 14 years, there is a new installment about the adventures of this irrepressible British woman with a zest for life and wine.They may be less enthused to find out that Bridget is no longer with her love Mark Darcy (played to perfection—and with a wink to Pride and Prejudice—by Colin Firth in the movie). I won’t ruin things...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

If you bundled the feisty, irrepressible Bridget Jones (sans weight problem) with a fearless Jane "007" Bond and starred her in "The Perils of Pauline Does the War on Terror" with al Qaeda operatives rampant, you might get a rough picture of Helen Fielding's wryly witty take on today's world. The very title of her latest ∧#156;uvre, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, narrated...

New series from genre giant

No discussion of chick lit would be complete without mentioning the long-awaited novel from the genre's biggest star Bridget Jones's Diary author Helen Fielding. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination features a new heroine, and, on the outside at least, beautiful, urbane Olivia couldn't be more different from the insecure and always-dieting Bridget. But Olivia's image has been carefully...

Bridget is back

In 1998, The Diary of Bridget Jones allowed readers a peek at the not-so-private life of Bridget Jones, a 30-something, eternally dieting, single girl caught in the undertow of career ambition. Her half-hearted attempts at a worthwhile career consumed some of her time, but Bridget was more concerned with her personal life and at the end of Diary, it seemed her persistence paid off.Well, Bridget...

A title wave of beach paperbacks Whether you're contemplating a trip to an exotic beach, or planning to spend the warm weather months in the back yard, you'll want to bring along that most necessary of seasonal accouterments. No, not sunscreen. We're talking summer reading. Especially the easy-to-tote paperback variety. A hardcover sensation, John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and...

Not your run-of-the-treadmill story

Back when at least a few entertainers owned both intelligence and a sense of the fitness of things, Fred Allen, the great wit and radio comedian -- in his case, not mutually contradictory terms -- wrote his autobiography and titled it Treadmill to Oblivion. It is an inspired title to an inspired book, one of the points of which is that no matter what you do or how well you do it on your path in...

Audio Column by Roger Miller

On the treadmill to oblivion Back when at least a few entertainers owned both intelligence and a sense of the fitness of things, Fred Allen, the great wit and radio comedian in his case, not mutually contradictory terms wrote his autobiography and titled it Treadmill to Oblivion. It is an inspired title to an inspired book, one of the points of which is that no matter what you do or how well...